Month: January 2014

I imagine they were sitting in an office holding the biggest weed dealer in that state when they made the decision. He probably offered them endless amounts of high grade weed to get them to agree. The legalisation of weed (aka marijuana, mary jane, giggle twig, pot, indo, wacky backy, chronic, herb, grass, ganja, cannabis) in 14 states in America is still one that boggles the mind. On the surface of it you would think that it’s totally legal in these states. However it’s a little more complicated than that. Of the all those states there are some that have decriminalised the weed laws (if you get caught with weed, depending on the quantity it’s not prison, but a mere confiscation), some states also have legal medical weed, some states have both legal medical weed AND decriminalised weed, and two states have made it perfectly legal.

Now this is ‘Murica and for us from other parts of the world it’s hard to describe their Federal Laws and State Laws and all the rest of that. I don’t want to bore you to sleep trying to act intelligent when in fact all the info I got was from wikipedia. I much rather talk about the potential advantages/problems of legalisation or potentially the good things about it.

1. Flooded Market and therefore lower price

Replace water with weed

There are only two states where weed is legalised. TWO states. So that means competition. All the dealers and growing their weed for Washington State and Colorado. I am not going on the assumption that EVERYONE in Washington State is high all the time, but I am sure that now at parties that poor innocent girl who used to always say no to a puff and use the “its illegal” excuse is a master roller. It will now also be affordable for everyone. Weed used to be referred to as a gateway drug that helps drug dealers fund the movement of much more dangerous stuff. I don’t know if its true, but the number of overnight drug dealers, weed delivery men, dial a joint and other start up companies must have helped the economy of Colorado.

2. Variations of Weed

Laboratory grown

Its a fact that weed is grown in peoples basements with all sorts of UV lights and moisture conditions and things like that. I have seen it in the movies (not sure which ones to use as examples). There will be the tourist growth industry of weed competitions and the best grower will win a life time supply of Pringles in all possible flavours!

There will be space cake competitions as well where the cakes are judged not only on looks, but also on the quality, length and speed of the high. They will have to fly in special judges from around North, East, South and West London to come and adjudicate in these competitions.

Judges flown in from London for the various competitions

3. “I was in Washington State for the weekend”

Monday morning. Headache from the night before getting high in your apartment. Suddenly, as per company policy the random drug test happens. It’s your turn. You have an excuse. You don’t have to say you were smoking. You were visiting your uncle. He smokes. You were in the same room as him. Second hand smoke from some killer mary jane. Random drug test defeated.

Hashtag Winning!!!

4. Possible Slowdown of Demand

It may be that because it was illegal was the reason why people were so desperate to get their hands on some giggle twig. With it being readily available, it could result in less people actually smoking less instead of more.

5. Destroyed States

Before and after pictures…

The most extreme case is that after a few years, there are a few states (two in particular) that are essentially not functioning. They will be people who have decided to take an early retirement, live on their weed plantation, smoke all day and all night. There are also the health risks associated to smoking a lot of weed. Lack of motivation, personality and mood changes, increased heart beat (and risk of heart attack) and reduced sexual capacity. Of course you can always guarantee that those states will never vote for anything violence related. They will all be about the peace (or at least so we hope).

Ultimately it is a weird law. Well not necessarily weird, but a complex one. There is something that they have in place (and I do hope that its for all states) that says that if you come within 150 metres of a school or a recreation centre with ANY amount of weed is a felony and is punishable by up to 5 years and a fine of up to $50,000. Sorry kids, dealer can’t come deliver while you are in class. You gonna have to see them after.

It’s a question I have asked myself numerous times. Are we a product of our environment or are we just born and wired to be a certain way. It was a conversation I was having with my brother. Some people use the excuse that they are a certain way because of maybe their upbringing. Some things can be excused and that works as a relevant reason. Of course, the other side to the conversation is that people are just that way. In my few years on this planet, I have met all sorts of people. Some have been friends for lot of years and I have had to shelve the friendship. This usually has been because their true colours have eventually come out. Some of these people have hurt me or hurt the people I care about.

I think this is when you eventually see the true nature of some people. When they are being nice and decent to you, it can be just how they are acting to get what they want from you, be it emotional or financial support, or any other form of support. Of course when they do show what they are underneath the layers of lies and how fake they are, that is when you truly see some people for who they are. How selfish, spiteful, lying, violent, misleading, heartless, self righteous they are (This isn’t one person. They are just adjectives I could use to describe some people I may or may not know).

Some of the hoodies are so big they look like the grim reaper…

You have the yobs that grow up in inner city London, who go around in gangs, with their hoodies, harassing innocent bystanders, giving people happy slaps behave this way because this is all they know. To them they think that threatening people, spitting everywhere, swearing and skipping school is the only way to survive. Some of them come from rather poor backgrounds. The question is: are they a product of their environment or have they simply adjusted in order to survive? There is an aspect of mob mentality to this as well as they spend their time in gangs.

This was during the London Riots. Helps to hide identity I guess

If you grow up without a lot of things in your life, when you have the opportunity to get money does that mean you will immediately do whatever it takes to get it? There are humble people who are loaded and there are also humble people who aren’t. I think that it is mainly to do with how that person is wired.

People who let the way they are be changed by their environment are a little spineless as far as I’m concerned. If your environment states that you cannot show your talent or show that you have ideas, then you need to find one that will.

I agree and sort of disagree with the statement

People are people at the end of the day. The ones who are assholes are born assholes. There is nothing anyone can do about it. How you are brought up will affect you no doubt. However, to use that as an excuse throughout your whole life shows that you have not grown up. At the end of the day, no one chooses their own circumstances, especially at a young age. Ultimately you have to adjust and deal with the past and accept it because you can’t change it.

The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me – Oscar Wilde

For those of you who don’t know there was a mother of all revelations recently that the CEO of PSMAS (Premier Service Medical Aid Society) was paying himself a WHOPPPING USD230 000.00 a MONTH!!!! This by the way (there is some argument about it and I am not going to Google it because my subject matter is a little different from the issue) according to some people is a parastatal. Eventually the press got a hold of it and we found out. There were groans and moans in the bars from Harare to Kotwa. People calculated how many civil servants he could have paid with one salary, and furthermore how many people he could actually support (500 civil servants on his salary, multiplied by 6 people per family = around 3000). People tried to imagine what they would do with that kind of money. Jokes were made and passed around on WhatsApp. It was a circus.

All these salaries are in USD… just so you know

Today he was eventually forced to retire, albeit with some disgusting package. People feel a little better now that the monstrous pay that this guy was getting has finally been halted. Especially since the organisation still haven’t paid my brother for the birth of his son. So we all managed to breathe a sigh of relieve. Conversations in the bars now turn to if the #GoWarriors (Once again for those of you unfamiliar the Warriors are the Zimbabwe National Soccer Team) will manage to beat Libya in the Africa Cup of Nations.

There is something that we are not talking about: The fact that some good has come from this whole situation. This is the perfect time for us to wake up as a Nation. Maybe a drive should be made so that it is public knowledge what these CEOs of parastatals are taking home every month. PSMAS is apparently USD38 000 000.00 in debt, but they were still paying their CEO 230k a month, they passed a board resolution that all of the top management would get a random bonus of around 300k, but they did nothing to bring themselves out of this 38million dollar hole?

You can get your adding machine and work out how many civil servants he could pay on one month’s salary

There needs to be a little more transparency in order for there to be accountability. I doubt that some of these CEOs would be proud to say that they are taking home a SHITLOAD of money every month, but the parastatal is unable to fully function. This lack of management is unacceptable. As more of these stories come out, I hope that there is some clearing up that is being done.

I say this with a great deal of difficulty, but for once the newspapers in this country have done something right. I am very sure, that very soon they will return to their polarised finger pointing ways…

I wanted to start this on a rather light note before delving into the trickiness that is this particular blog. Here is some light heartedness for you to watch.

That a very interesting pho…why you sitting on a black person?

There has been a lot of noise that has been made about this particular image above. I am going to give you a quick glimpse into a WhatsApp conversation I have with a few friends regarding this picture shortly. If you don’t know what the picture is about click here to read The Mirrors article about it. To give you a quick two minute break down of the story, it goes like this. Roman Abramovich’s girlfriend released this photo (conveniently on Martin Luther King Day), got shat on, apologised and then removed it. It’s very odd how it went up on such a relevant day.

Below is an extract of part of a conversation I had with a group of friends about the above photo:

The start of the end…Commentary on Dasha’s looks were also part of the conversations….There was cursing as people got a little involved…My friends have a way of expressing themselvesAn insightful opinion always helpsOpinions are like assholes…Blame game beginsPossible reasons…

Now there are a few things that need to be clarified once and for all. The image itself can be viewed as being offensive by some. Other people can’t really see what’s wrong with the photo. I think that it was tasteless of Dasha to put the photo out on Martin Luther King. It may have actually been intentional because maybe she is ignorant or possibly racist. I don’t know. I’ve never met the woman.

The person I am more annoyed (replace with upset) with is the chick who is acting as the chair. Why did she agree to be portrayed like that? Of course here there could be a million reasons for that. It could have been desperation, stupidity or possibly choice. What do you think?

I had a very interesting debate a few days ago with some friends and a very drunk guy. Unfortunately I can’t remember the very drunk guy’s name, so from here on he will be refered to as TVDG (The very drunk guy). Can you steal an idea from someone? To make it simple, lets say TVDG designed the very first glass drinking container. That was his idea. He decided that he needed a container from which to drink liquid from, and he shaped it as seen below:

TVDG’s drinking container design

If I, upon seeing this design for a drinking container, decided that it didn’t have enough excitement, and decided to design a container like the one below, would I have stolen someones idea?

My container

I don’t think that would be entirely idea theft. The fact is, the moment you tell someone about one of your idea and then they execute it down to the last letter as you have said you want to do it, then your idea has been stolen. I think that if you express an idea, and it gets worked on and made better or different, it isn’t idea theft necessarily.

This is pretty much self explanatory…

The reason I don’t think that you can steal an idea, is that it is pretty much the opposite of inception. It’s not someone else putting an idea in your head. It’s you forming an idea in your head. It will never be as original when someone else does it (unless they have unwarranted access to all your working drawings, meeting notes, contact details, schematics, and video presentations) because we are not clones (at least I hope we are not clones…).

The reason it is hard to steal an idea I think, is also because people have their own visions of that idea. Hence the difference between TVDG’s drinking container and mine. The tricky part is that some ideas are formed by speaking to friends and “friends” about the idea, with the intention of trying to further form it. Sometimes your idea is nothing more that the baby steps, and you need to talk to someone who can help to turn the baby steps into a full on sprint by making you think outside the box.

Maybe this is what Apple did…

For those of you afraid of having an idea pinched from you here are a few things you can do to avoid that terribly situation from happening

Thanks for coming…

Don’t have ideas

Getting that intellectual property protection thing is complicated and expensive. Refer to point number 1

Only share your idea with your friends when they are drunk. They are less likely to remember

The best additions to your idea come after friends have been engaging in mind altering drugs. They are also less likely to remember.

If you do write or type an idea down, keep it in a safe, or get some encryption software, put a password on the file and then (like I did) eventually forget what the password is.

I want to start by wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year. I hope you had a safe and enjoyable festive season. If you can’t remember much of it, then you drank enough.

Well I am finally back at work. Yes yes yes I know that I seem to also blog at work. I also know that I have been off for about a month and there are a lot of people who are frankly glad that I have returned to working again. Personally I’m a little bit glad to be back at work. Not over the moon, but a little bit glad. After a month, you run out of things to do, and run out of money, get tired of all the powercuts (power outages to other people), there is only so much sleep you can have in the middle of the morning, and there is so much drunken behaviour that you can engage in before you become obnoxious, even to yourself.

I’ve decided to describe my holiday through mainly pictures and a few choice words as well.

1. The Best Party I’ve been to since coming back to Zimbabwe in 2009

Neverland 2013. A party in field with DJs playing music from midday till midnight. To be held at my sports club OGS. It was advertised on the BookFace for a few months before it happened. Had no idea who any of the DJs were. All I knew was that it was going to be an electronic music event. I kept on saying that I wanted to go to it, but I didn’t go and actually buy the tickets. I was trying to sell it to my friends. My wonderful girlfriend had agreed to go with me. Then one day she told me she had got tickets and we were going.

Chido showing us how the American’s do itMy girl, Farai’s wife, and Farai infront of the stage

Also the weather report had said that it was gonna rain cats, dogs, monkeys, and a few goats. The weather was atrocious.

The stage had visualisations!

The stage during the day looked nice and entertaining…

Mark Stent had us guys going a bit nutty

At night it was a Christmas tree.

All in all, the BEST party I have been to in Zimbabwe… EVER!!!

Seasons greetings from Pilsner after the show

2. Nyanga with friends for New Years

We managed to put together our little trip with friends from the 28th of December till the 2nd of January. At this stage, staying in Harare for New Years is expensive and stupid. Instead we got into our cars and got out of town to get some fresh air and over indulge in everything. I will let the pictures explain…

The refreshments for the tripBalling outta control with our high stakes poker gamesSome of the beautiful scenery that is Nyanga

When we came back to the pollution filled Harare, we realised just how relaxing it was to get out into proper fresh air and just relax.

3. Brain exercise/relaxation/distraction

Part of the collection that I dove into during my holiday

This was the main way that I kept our of trouble. I played a LOT of PS3. It kept me up until 3am, of random Tuesday nights, it gave me block eyes, it made me a little afraid to leave the house sometimes. I also added onto the collection above, and subtracted. I added some FIFA, The Walking Dead and Siphon FIlter. Surprisingly I only managed to finish The Walking Dead. I got a lot of gaming in, and it felt good, and also made me feel a little sick sometimes. Please adhere to the warning that says take a break every so often. You will start to believe that you are being followed around by either masked gunmen with automatic weapons or something insane like that.

Funnily enough, I still haven’t even picked up GTA V… that’s how good some of the other games I’m playing are.

2013 Review/2014 Preview

Last year was good. This year I hope will be better for me and for all my friends and loved ones. This year I have decided to not fight as many fires are I fought last year. I am gonna let a few of them burn and I will watch from the sideline. I also want to try and quit smoking. It’s started off not as great, but its a work in progress. I also want to give up the booze for a while. If possible, even reduce it down to a minuscule amount per week (nothing would be better). If I manage to do a month dry, I will buy myself something a reward for doing something that I should have been able to do.

I also will hopefully get back into doing regular exercise (to help with the stopping of the smoking). This needs to be a year of doing. Results based. I hope that for you, it is also a year of success and completion. As Robbie Williams once said, “No regrets. They don’t work.”